This morning I left my home at quarter to nine to meet the motorbike driver who takes me to work, and outside the front door of my building walked straight into a wedding party.

It was being held in a long narrow marquee erected in the laneway outside my building. The lane was only slightly wider than the marquee, leaving just enough room for me to walk through. At the far end of the marquee I inadvertently got caught up in a wedding photo (I’ll be the Tay (westerner) scurrying through the guests at the far left of the shot), after which I weaved my way among a group of women wearing beautiful scarlet ao dai, before finding my motorbike driver.

Ao dai are the traditional costumes consisting of long, tight-fitting silk tunics worn over loose trousers that Vietnamese women don for special occasions. I could not see the bride in the throng of guests as I departed by motorbike, but she was actually more likely to be wearing a flounced western wedding dress than an elegant ao dai, judging by the many wedding photos I have seen taken at beauty spots around town.

Most weekends I see a few couples having their wedding photos taken, and sometimes several in the same spot. The photos are not taken on the day of the wedding, but weeks, if not months ahead, so that they can be displayed on the big day. My favourite sight from one of these photo shoots was a bored-looking groom-to-be trailing his fiancée as he carried her high-heeled shoes.

A quarter to nine on a weekday morning might seem a strange time for a wedding party, but I was told by a Vietnamese work colleague that both the date, and the time of day, of the wedding are carefully chosen by the couple and their families after consulting a fortune teller. Believing in supernatural forces is common in Vietnam, and those forces are held to affect people’s lives in many ways.

This morning may also have been a particularly auspicious time for a wedding as it immediately followed the 15th day of the first lunar month of the lunar year (the Tet new year festival falls on the first day of that month).

My colleague told me that the 15th day after new year is a very important time for the worship of ancestors, with people holding big family dinners and visiting pagodas to pray, leave offerings and ask deceased parents and grandparents for help in this world.

Last night I also saw people burning paper money on the street, to send to their ancestors – another example of the pervasive beliefs in a spiritual world, and in its everyday links to the material world.